


Silent and Sweet

by ChampagneSly



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Poetry, Romance, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 04:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChampagneSly/pseuds/ChampagneSly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>from the Poetry!AU…because on days like today I miss it. </p><p>Romantic Arthur. Sleeping Alfred. Trying on Arthur’s POV for a change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent and Sweet

 

Once, when he still spoke in half-truths and carefully measured verse, Arthur had stolen from Neruda to tell Alfred he  _liked when he was quiet because it was though he was absent_. But he had not then finished the stanza, had not let Alfred in on the secret, because they were still months and miles away from the lessons of Pablo and the truths that Arthur had long kept hidden in his heart. At the time it had been well enough that Alfred read only teasing between the lines and walked away believing only that Arthur preferred his mouth closed and his tongue tied.

Now he had whispered countless fevered verses against Alfred’s smiling and acquiescent lips. He had erased all the numbers and figures from Alfred’s mind of gears and metal with poem after poem until he was almost certain Alfred did not possess a coherent thought that Arthur had not murmured into his ear and slipped into his eager body. In these rushed and heady days of so much change and so much happiness, Arthur did not dwell much on the unrequited words that had once sustained him.

And yet there remained some truth in that unfinished thought borrowed from a better pen, something to be appreciated in the moments of Alfred’s silence when Arthur was near enough to appreciate such stillness. In moments such as this, on evenings when the English rain fell on a rented roof in Cambridge, when Alfred was asleep beside him with one hand tucked beneath the warm curve of his thigh and all Arthur could hear was the sound of his breath and the echo of raindrops, Neruda whispered in all his thoughts. 

_ I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent, _

_and you hear me from far away, and my voice does not touch you._

_It looks as though your eyes had flown away_

_and it looks as if a kiss had sealed your mouth._

Arthur was all too aware of his propensity towards ridiculous sentimentality when it came to man pressed against his side, sharing far too much warmth and taking up too much space in his bed and in his thoughts, but it was difficult not to touch his finger to Alfred’s sleeping face and find him poetic in his stillness. Arthur despaired for his manuscript ever getting finished if he was to be so routinely distracted by the curve of Alfred’s back and the parting of his lips and the little lines at the corners of his eyes that confirmed what Arthur already knew from the occasional ache in his knees. They were no longer so young, no longer reprobate men with more energy than sense, though he suspected that Alfred would always be more impulse than deliberation no matter how many wrinkles creased his forehead.

He wondered if Alfred was here now on impulse, if he had badgered Germania into a sabbatical to follow Arthur to Cambridge and spend his days doing God only knew what, because the idiot had woken up one morning and decided that spending the rainy fall and winter months in England seemed like a jolly good time. Arthur brushed Alfred’s messy hair from his forehead, turned the page of the book he was barely reading, and decided that he wouldn’t put it the past the man to something so foolish.  He supposed it was hardly his concern if Alfred was determined to dog his footsteps to tether his life to Arthur’s with what seemed like nary a worry. It was only that Alfred was so damnably loud, constantly living in the present tense that it was nearly impossible for Arthur to hear his own thoughts, to find the space and time to parse through the feelings that Alfred gave to him so carelessly now, to properly appreciate this new meter of a shared life. 

But now, Alfred was silent and Arthur was still distracted, still drawn to the novelty of Alfred’s face in sleep and the little sounds he made in his dreams. All those years he had kept bitten off verse between his teeth, all the poetry he’d whispered into a ear he knew would not know how to listen, and Arthur had not suspected it would be like this. He had thought often the taste of Alfred’s skin or the satisfaction to be found in kissing him until he stopped being so stupidly endearing, but he had not lingered on quiet daydreams of running his fingers down Alfred’s spine to count each vertebra. He had not anticipated in all his consideration that there would be so much to be said for Alfred, speechless, warm and close. 

At least not without an indecent amount of sex involved. 

This other sort of intimacy, as dull Alfred’s conversation in the early morning and as familiar as the faint line of freckles on Alfred’s shoulder, was something for which he had not known to wish.  Arthur set his book on the nightstand and listened to the rain, splayed his hand over Alfred’s back and wondered how he’d once presumed to understand Neruda at all. 


End file.
